My god Matt thanks so much for this bible!!! Altought we dont rely on rt shaders, your manifesto is such a good pointer man.... Much appreciated
Thanks a big bunch! Sly Sylvain Lebeau // SHED V-P/Visual effects supervisor 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8 T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025WWW.SHEDMTL.COM On 2013-05-06, at 22:31, Matt Lind <ml...@carbinestudios.com> wrote: > We haven’t switched to 2014 yet, but in testing we’ve encountered a number of > regressions in important areas to us. Let me emphasize what is important to > us might not be important to you. > > In our case the problem has been the ability to upgrade and migrate old data > into a current release and have it continue to function as expected – e.g. be > durable. For example, we use realtime shaders very heavily in our > production…in fact every single asset in our production uses them. But > there’s always some type of bug/regression in each new release with realtime > shading preventing an upgrade. We were stuck on 7.5 for years until 2013 SP1 > finally resolved the shading issues. However, upon testing everything else > we discovered many animation features regressed such as ability to import > FCurve data efficiently, rotation order not computed properly on transforms, > scene doesn’t update/refresh properly, cut n’ paste FCurve keys fails, > envelopes get really cranky/crash when a deformer is not found, > callbacks/events intermittently fail or don’t execute, scene layers > misbehave, etc… It’s been whack-a-mole. Many bugs we’ve found in 2013 are > still present in 2014. Problem is we cannot consistently reproduce some of > these bugs as the variables leading to their appearance can be complex much > like needing the stars to align a certain way before the issue is revealed. > We just don’t have a complete picture of all the stars involved in the > problem yet to be able to submit a report for further investigation. It’s a > real stressing point in our production. > > In regards to 2014, the realtime shading architecture migration from RTS 3 to > RTS 4 doesn’t work, or there is no migration path. Since RTS 3 is > technically deprecated (but still supported) that is a problem for us. If a > shader is not installed, Softimage won’t open the scene/.emdl. In fact, > Softimage will crash in spectacular fashion. If you don’t use realtime > shaders, then this won’t be an issue for you. > > If I had to summarize the main issues, it seems like many features in recent > releases touched on core components and were either inserted in rush fashion > or sloppily implemented leading to stupid bugs and regressions. These > largely revolve around system updates and notifications on the backend. For > the other stuff where it’s more data centric, the data gets into scene files > and becomes a problem when the data is migrated forward to a newer release > and needs to be iterated by an artist. Problem is the data no longer behaves > the same. We’ve had a few models created in 7.5 that when brought into > current versions don’t react the same way. Either data in the delta is > getting interpreted differently, or in some cases, the file just won’t load. > Envelopes are a victim of this specific problem. > > I could go on, but the moral of the story is to test thoroughly before > upgrading. Of course, that lesson applies to every product. > > > Matt > > > > > > From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com > [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sylvain Lebeau > Sent: Monday, May 06, 2013 4:25 PM > To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com > Subject: 2014 in production anyone? > > Hi everyone…. > > After flaming ferosiously at the 2014 release, seeing the bug fixes list > quite brought me back down to earth. Very extensive list so hat's off to the > new devs for this. Must be quite a puzzle. And to me this is much more > important then new tools. > > In the meantime, i would really like to hear about peoples who already > switched. What are the culprits you've went into?, backward compatibility?, > broken addons you rely upon? Regressions?… every single thing that could make > me happy about my renewed subscription would be appreciated. > > thanks for your time! > > > sly > > > > Sylvain Lebeau // SHED > V-P/Visual effects supervisor > 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8 > T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM <http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM> >
